Several large remote sensing systems are considered as NASA facility instruments, in part because they support multiple science disciplines, and a variety of NASA science objectives. They are supported by managers in the ESD Research and Analysis program, and/or the EOS Project Science Office, and are made available to the wider NASA science community via the flight request process. In most cases, instrument operating and data processing costs are recovered from the requesting individual or their sponsors.

The systems described here reside at either Ames Research Center or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (noted as ARC or JPL, respectively.)